With few exceptions most everyone that appears in this film are transient characters who are never named. This includes the bevy of naked women (and zombies) that appear and disappear throughout the length of this shockingly absurd flick. Of those characters who are named (or are at least important enough to note) you will meet:

The Mayor - Typical uninspired bureaucrat played by Howard Vernon. Was his name ever mentioned? You wont care.

Chanac - I've not a blessed clue what this characters point or purpose is besides being the mayor's gopher, yet IMDB lists him as a named character! I'd ask why but I don’t care.

Katya - Your friendly Russ, er, Parisian reporter. Why they named this character Katya is beyond me. Her character is pretty much irrelevant so, really, who cares?

Peasant Woman (?) - This is the French village girl saved from her virginity by a German soldier (who becomes the nameless leader zombie) in a flash back. There's no credits, IMDB doesn't list a name for her, and I didn't notice a lot of dialogue in her barn scene.

Helena - The strange girl-child offspring of Peasant Woman's summer of love. She's a preteen, the movie looks like it's set in the mid to late seventies, and the war occurred circa the forties. Do the math. The mind boggles.

THE PLOT

Heralded by some as the worst zombie movie of the genre ZOMBIE LAKE is one of those rarified cult gems that next to no one will admit liking, yet every fan of bad movies has probably seen it at least once. And if they haven't then they can turn their Bad Movie Club Card™ in at the desk! So what's the story?

OMGWTFBBQ!?

To begin with this is set somewhere in France, at least that is what the DVD jacket says. I believe that's also what the characters say but I am unconvinced. This looks like it was shot on location in the backyard acreage of some old European estate, probably someone's "friend of a friend's" rich uncle's manor house.

And the plot?

It's virtually incomprehensible. The movie opens on what looks to be a scenic country lake setting sometime circa the seventies. A single female wanders through an idyllic copse sheltering a secluded gazebo wherein she gets into her birthday suit and heads for the water. Before you can swallow that first fist full of popcorn Ms. Skinny Dipper is getting dragged to her doom by a zombie wearing a costume patterned after the regular army uniform of either the Wehrmacht or Panzergrenadiers. Let me repeat that: An innocent nubile young woman is attacked by an Aqua Nazi Zombie while skinny dipping, in broad daylight, in a country lake.

Are we being punked?

Sadly we are not. Worse, now aroused by the sweet taste of virginal woman flesh Mr. Nazi Zombie suddenly shambles forth from the murky depths and spastically attacks some hapless woman walking her cart over a bridge. Wait, rewind that. There’s a bridge with regular foot traffic over a lake full of Zombies?! A bridge? Over a lake!!!?? Talk about your exaggerating real estate agents turning log cabins into rustic country mansions. As if that’s not bizarre enough get this: Hungry Aqua Nazi Zombie attacks Ms. Innocent Victim’s neck and proceeds to slurp up her blood!

Blood? Zombie? Aqua Nazi Blood Drinking Force? Nubile skinny dippers? What the BLEEP!? I swear this is how this movie starts. I am not making this up. On the bright side you know the cameraman and crew probably had fun filming those scenes. And bless them for the close ups! The downside, it looks like the scenes were only shot once and the editors had to take the good with the bad as that‘s all they had. Speaking of which there is a flashback sequence later in the movie that attempts to fill in some back story but all it manages to show are that the German soldiers, meaning the Nazi zombies, were part of an stock footage mobile armored column.

Considering the uniforms that’s a nice bit of detail, if accurate. And the point is, that, uhm, well. .

The story, as I see it, is this: During World War II French (?) resistance fighters ambush a German column- actually a single armored vehicle, this is a ultra cheap quikie flick after all- and dispose of the bodies in a nearby lake. Wasn't that lucky? A lake was right there for them to dump all those bodies in! Alas, deprived of proper Christian burials, the spirits of the dead become restless. Now skip forward to the relative present of the movie and, behold, peculiar happenings and mysterious deaths abound around "Ghost Lake". (That’s the actual name for the lake used in the movie.) Apparently this is big news, big enough to bring a journalist from Paris to the otherwise quiet French village to investigate. That’s when things really start to happen!

Confused? Join the club.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THIS MOVIE

If you can knock over a no swimming sign there's no reason not to go swimming.

Zombie Lake was made in 1980, a time when the main films that formed the cultus of the zombie movie genre were Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). While there were numerous imitations and low budget knock-offs produced prior to the release of Zombie Lake the next real cornerstone film of this horror sub-genre, Return of the Living Dead, would not be released until 1985. This being the same year George A. Romero's cult classic Day of the Dead would be released.

However what sets Zombie Lake apart from the usual run of the mill quickie imitations is the presence of Nazi zombies. A trope that, prior to this, was really used to effect only once in Shock Waves (1976). A movie that is really more of a mad scientist film with zombie undertones. In the interim since Zombie Lake first appeared there have been dozens of zombie films released, though only a handful have centered on Nazi zombies. One of the more notorious being Oasis of the Zombies (1983), which was filmed by infamous sleaze auteur Jess Franco (Sadomania, Vampyros Lesbos). By comparison Zombie Lake lacks the obvious exploitation elements favored by such film makers. This of course being gratuitous gore and excessive violence, both of which have become hallmarks of the zombie movie genre.

However, in the final analysis, the real judge is the audience. This movie is often cited as being the worse zombie movie ever made, but in truth it is not. Zombie Lake is not meant to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre with zombies. Nor is it an attempt to recreate Night of the Living Dead. If that is what you are expecting to see in a zombie movie you’ll be sorely disappointed.

39 min 37 sec - All female vollyball team arrive at the lake for some skinny dipping fun. (Count them by the bus and pay close attention to how many get into the lake and how many are attacked by zombies.)

No offense but this movie has been reviewed to absolute death. I've seen it on nearly every single bad movie site ever. And why, oh why, does everyone call them Nazis? They appear to be regular German infantry as opposed to goosestepping, arm band-wearing, book-burning full-fledged Party members. They aren't even the SS. But then again, I supposed "German soldier zombies" doesn't sound as cool as "Nazi zombies."

A little harsh, Koosh. I thought it was a quality review. I don't see why the fact that something has been reviewed on other sites means it shouldn't be covered here. Then again, I don't read other bad movie review sites.

As for the Nazis, you guys both seem to know more about German military uniforms than I do. Even though there appear to be no swastikas or little ss lightning flashes, I think it's likely the filmmakers meant to evoke Nazism with those uniforms, though; it worked on me.

Logged

"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

It is a quality review, I was just saying...well....blah, I guess I kind of put my foot in my mouth didn't I? My apologies.

And, they do have the Swastika, on the little eagle symbol on the right breast I believe, but all German soldiers had this and it's barely visible unless you really look, and anyway these guys are story-wise portrayed as regular soldiers for the most part, and their killing unjustified especially after the one guy saved that woman's life.

WWII German characters are always tricky to do anyway. They can either be outright villains like in the Indiana Jones films and The Sound of Music, or ambilvalent in-betweeners, which only really happens if the movie's aim is to show the war from multiple sides such as in The Longest Day, or even in A Bridge Too Far where the German soldier dies trying to save his commander from his burning halftrack. And occasionally one will even be the protagonist, like Omar Shariff's Colonel Grau in The Night of the Generals and James Mason's Rommel in The Desert Fox.

As for the Nazis, you guys both seem to know more about German military uniforms than I do.

Kooshmeister has a valid point about identifying insignia. I did my best to identify the uniforms and the closest thing they resembled in my print references were regular army uniforms. I mentioned that in passing so calling them "Aqua Nazi Zombies", well, it just has a nice ring to it.